For the higher education summit to succeed, participants will have to put the higher interests of Quebec society above their own.

QUEBEC — When the chances for success seem slim, lower expectations.

If Higher Education Minister Pierre Duchesne has learned one thing in his six months in office, it is the age old political practise of downplaying what he actually expects to accomplish.

Even if this week’s summit on higher education is widely viewed as a test for the Parti Québécois, which promised it in the election as the solution to the “printemps érable” crisis, Duchesne has gone out of his way to say it might not solve all the problems.

In fact, it’s just the start, he says.

“When we will be all together again in February for the summit, we will not view this event as a last chance,” Duchesne said when he kicked off one of the pre-summit meetings in November. “It’s an important step but it is not the final destination in our voyage. If our reflection leads to the birth of other work fields, so be it.”

Since then he has repeated the remark many times. Over the weekend, as feverish behind-the-scenes negotiations continued, Duchesne again warned there will be no grand signing of a joint statement at the end of the event.

He now describes the summit as the beginning of a new dialogue.

Officials told The Gazette on Sunday some agreements might be reached on a few themes but disputed areas will be considered “chantiers” for further study and debate.

Still, faced with a barrage of criticism, especially from the previous Liberal government, Duchesne has talked the talk — especially in the provincial legislature.

“Quebecers have asked us to settle this crisis, to lower the pressure,” Duchesne said Thursday under questioning from the Liberals. “The population is watching us all, the population that lived through the crisis. It expects success.”

In fact, even if the summit is supposed to be dealing with a wide range of education issues, the feeling around the legislature last week was that Duchesne would be happy just getting the tuition issue settled, and the solution there remains the more manageable indexation. The rest can wait.

Officials Sunday confirmed that is the bottom line. Duchesne said it himself last week.

“On the question of tuition fees, the population expects us to come to an agreement,” Duchesne, a former television journalist, told reporters Thursday.

It doesn’t hurt knowing that new polls show the population backs the government’s view that university tuition fees need to go up and there is wide support for indexation.

Duchesne is not saying it out loud, but a new pressure is egging him on. There are some inside the PQ who think their association with the student movement last spring nixed the PQ dream of a majority government in the fall election.

“The government is convinced they lost their majority because of their support of the student movement,” Martine Desjardins, president of the Féderation étudiante universitaire du Québec (FEUQ) told Radio-Canada this week.

“We don’t think we owe them something (in the form of a smooth deal).”

Still, minus the presence of the more radical student elements in the Association pour une solidarité syndicate étudiante (ASSÉ), which is boycotting the summit, Quebec thinks its best chance at a deal is with the FEUQ and the CEGEP federation, la Federation étudiante collégiale (FECQ).

And the last-minute attempts to woo them were underway. On Friday, a Soleil reporter spotted FECQ president Éliane Laberge emerging from a private meeting with Duchesne in Quebec City.

Marois herself has met with the same leaders as well as the chair of Quebec’s conference of rectors and university principals, Luce Samoisette. She has even tried flattery, letting leak that she thinks the well-spoken, media-savvy Desjardins would be a great PQ candidate in the future. Sunday, Desjardins told Radio-Canada the leak was a little too coincidental and she won’t be bought off with sweet talk.

But Marois and Duchesne have pulled out all the stops with speculation much of the summit’s “good news” has already been negotiated behind the scenes, the press releases written to ensure the appearance of success.

The government nevertheless started to show its negotiating cards in advance.

First, indexation — even if as of Sunday it was still rejected by students who say they are already being indexed yearly — is indeed on the table for discussion, according to a summit participant’s document made public by Duchesne.

The document opens with a warning that Quebec’s financial situation remains “difficult,” which means free tuition (which would cost $1 billion a year) is out. But so is a “radical and immediate” tuition increase.

It concludes the summit should discuss the “evolution” of tuition fees, including indexation and related fees.

Duchesne confirmed last week there are three possible formulas, cooked up by respected Quebec economist Pierre Fortin, the “go-to guy” for many Quebec governments in a bind. The government could increase tuition based on the consumer price index (an increase of two per cent, or about $46, a year), base it on a family’s disposable income (which would mean a two-per-cent, or $70, increase in tuition) or, finally, base it on the increase in universities’ operating costs (3.5 per cent, or $83, a year).

At the same time and in much the same way the Liberals tried themselves, the government would beef up student financial aid packages. There’s no way to say which formula will fly, but Desjardins was taking a hard line on indexation Friday, dropping an electoral threat, too.

“Maybe the population is in favour of indexation but at the level of youth, youth are opposed to this proposal,” Desjardins said. “They are rather in favour of a freeze or free tuition and if the government decides to go ahead with indexation this will have an influence on their votes in the next election.”

The people who so far seem to be left out in the cold are the province’s disgruntled universities. One wild rumour floating around the National Assembly last week had Quebec scrapping the $250 million in cuts it has announced for universities — allowing them to carry larger deficits — as a way of wooing them into signing a deal at the summit.

The government does support the creation of the Conseil national des universités, a kind of watchdog to ensure the “coherent development” of the university system, a response to student complaints of mushrooming satellite campuses and wasteful university spending.

The Conseil would be purely advisory, an olive branch to rectors who want to maintain their autonomy. Student federations wanted the agency to have enforcement powers, believing tuition increases could be averted if universities wasted less. The rectors are also being told their future financing might be hinged to some kind of performance criteria, another area sure to irritate.

The summit’s jammed agenda — the event only lasts a day and a half — and the posturing by the parties sets the scene for a tense pressure cooker affair, fuelled by the expected protests outside by groups boycotting the exercise.

Police on Friday announced plans to beef up security around the summit location, Arsenal art contemporain in Griffintown.

Even the four pre-summit exercises have been ineffective in diffusing the climate of mistrust. Police had to break out the tear gas in Sherbrooke.

And Quebec’s opposition parties, the Liberals, Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) and Québec solidaire — also at the table — are watching the minority government’s efforts.

The Quebec Liberal Party on Friday trotted out a summit position paper which is not so different from the position it had as a government. At a Montreal news conference, interim Liberal leader Jean-Marc Fournier repeated the party’s view that students need to assume a greater part of the cost of their studies — between 15 and 17 per cent — so universities have the necessary revenues.

Students currently pay 12.7 per cent of the cost of a university degree. In 1965, they paid 26 per cent.

Duchesne immediately responded, saying the Liberal proposal is a recipe for disaster, noting the last time they dabbled in this issue it cost $90 million in policing and security costs to put down riots.

The CAQ Friday denounced Quebec’s plan to create the Conseil as another useless level of bureaucracy. It favours a new tuition fee system based on the domain of study. A history degree, for example, would cost less than a medical degree.

Meanwhile, Québec solidaire denounced the fact free tuition for all is not even on the table.

Responding on Radio-Canada to Desjardins’ threat about losing the student vote in the next election, Duchesne reminded students Quebec taxpayers already contribute $3 billion a year to the province’s 18 universities.

“I am letting them think about that,” Duchesne said.

“We are not provoking, we’ll let the students reflect on this.”

But the government needs things to go well. A new public opinion poll shows that, six months into its mandate, the PQ’s honeymoon is over.

The CROP poll done for the Gesca news chain said 60 per cent of Quebecers now feel the province “is going in the wrong direction,” a 10-point increase in a month.

Fifty-eight per cent of Quebecers now say they are dissatisfied with the government, also an increase — six percentage points — from a month ago.

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